1Franz Kafka is regarded as one of the greatest literary figures in recent history.
2He is known for his uniquely dark, disorienting, and surreal writing style.
3A style and quality so particular to him that anything that resembles it has come to be known and referred to as Kafkaesque.
4To understand his writing and the qualities of Kafkaesque, it is helpful to understand his early life.
5Kafka was born in Prague in 1883 to a man named Herman and a woman named Julie.
6His father was a highly successful well-to-do businessman, who, through sheer force of will and a brash, aggressive personality,
7managed to rise from the working class, build a successful business, marry a well-educated woman,
8and become a member of higher middle society.
9As parents tend to do, Herman hoped for a child that would measure up to his ideal stature of a person.
10Franz Kafka was not that.
11Franz was born a small, anxious, and sickly boy.
12And he mostly remained that way.
13As a result, through no fault of his own, Franz would become a great source of disappointment for his father and a sort of psychological punching bag for him
14as he attempted to mold Franz into who he wished he was but could never be.
15Throughout his adolescence, Franz developed an urge to write as a means of dealing with his increasing sense of anxiety, guilt, and self-hatred.
16Of course, his father did not allow him to pursue writing and ultimately defined the borders around Kafka's life,
17forcing him to pursue law as a profession.
18During his time studying law in college, Kafka continued writing and met one of his only real friends, Max Brod,
19another writer who would eventually convince Kafka to publish his first 3 collections of work.
20These pieces sold very poorly, however, and essentially went unnoticed.
21After college, Kafka would go on to work in a law office and then for an insurance company.
22Here, Kafka would become subject to long hours, unpaid overtime, massive amounts of paperwork,
23and absurd, complex bureaucratic systems.
24Kafka was understandably miserable.
25While working at the insurance company, Kafka continued writing on the side,
26producing some of his most notable pieces including The Trial, The Castle, and Amerika.
27He did not attempt to publish any of these at the time, however, and even left much of his work unfinished,
28believing it to be unworthy.
29Kafka continued working at the insurance company for the majority of his remaining short life,
30while continuing to write around his work schedule.
31In 1924, he died of tuberculosis at age 41.
32Kafka never went on to publish any more of his writing, nor did he ever personally receive any success or recognition for the small amount he did.
33He died believing that his work wasn't any good.
34On his death bed, he even instructed Max Brod to burn all of his unpublished manuscripts following his death.
35Obviously, Brod did not follow Kafka's instructions.
36Because here we are, 100 years later, talking about him.
37After Kafka died, Brod spent the following year or so working to organize and publish his notes and manuscripts.
38Over the decade following, Kafka would become one of the most prominent literary and philosophical figures of the 20th century.
39In other words, one of the greatest writers and thinkers of the century lived his life with his work buried in some drawer;
40aware, unaware, or indifferent to the fact that he was sitting on some of the most significant works in recent history.
41He lived his life in the eyes of his father; an inadequate disappointment.
42And yet in the eyes of history, he is an immensely important individual.
43One can only wonder how many individuals like Kafka have and continue to walk this earth,
44completely disconnected or restricted from ever seeing who they really are or could be.
45How many Kafka's have lived and died without ever sharing their voice with the world, whose voice would have changed it forever?
46How many people never know who they'll be after they're gone?
47Fortunately for everyone other than Kafka, his work was saved,
48and an entirely new genre of thinking and writing developed in his name; Kafkaesque.
49Generally, the term Kafkaesque tends to refer to the bureaucratic nature of capitalistic, judiciary, and government systems.
50The sort of complex, unclear processes, in which no one individual ever really has a comprehensive grasp on what is going on and the system doesn't really care.
51But the quality of Kafkaesque also seems to extend much further than this.
52It is not necessarily exemplified merely by what these systems are,
53but rather, the reaction of the individuals subjected to them; and what it might represent.
54In one of his most famous novels, The Trial, the protagonist, Joseph Kay, is suddenly arrested at his home one morning.
55The officers do not inform Kay of why he is being arrested, though,
56and he is then forced through a long, absurd trial in which nothing is ever really explained or makes much sense.
57The trial is riddled with corruption and disorderliness,
58and by the end of the novel, after having meandered the entire thing, Kay is never told why he was arrested,
59and yet he remains guilty of his final conviction.
60In another one of his more popular stories, Metamorphosis,
61the protagonist, Gregor Samsa, awakes into having suddenly been turned into an insect with no clear explanation.
62The first and recurring issues Gregor faces throughout the novel are the problem of getting to work, dealing with his boss,
63and providing financially for his inconsiderately needy family.
64Gregor, of course, cannot do this. He is a bug.
65And so, he experiences increased dread trying to deal with his situation while becoming a useless nuisance to his family.
66In both stories, the protagonists are faced with sudden, absurd circumstances.
67There are no explanations. And, in the end, there is no real chance of overcoming them.
68They are outmatched by the arbitrary, senseless obstacles they face.
69In part, because they can't understand or control any of what is happening.
70The crux of Kafka's style and work seems to be carried by this confrontation with the absurd.
71A conflict in which a character's efforts, reasoning, and sense of the world are met with inescapable parameters of senselessness,
72wherein, success is both impossible and, in the end, ultimately pointless.
73And yet, they try anyway.
74It's fair to argue that one interpretation is that these circumstances are emblematic of Kafka's take on the human condition.
75Specifically, the unyielding desire for answers and conquest over the existential problems of anxiety, guilt, absurdity, and suffering,
76paired with an inability to ever really understand or control the source of the problems and effectively overcome them.
77But the kicker and perhaps most important part is...
78even in the face of absurd, despairing circumstances, Kafka's characters don't give up.
79At least initially, they continue on and fight against their situations,
80trying to reason, understand, or work their way out of the senselessness.
81But in the end, it is ultimately to no avail.
82Perhaps in this, Kafka is suggesting that the struggle to find solace and understanding is both inescapable and impossible.
83As conscious, rational beings, we fight against the absurdity,
84trying to resolve the discrepancy between us and the universe.
85But ironically, we only serve to self-perpetuate the very struggle we are trying to resolve by trying to resolve the unresolvable.
86And in this sense, on some level, we almost want the struggle.
87Of course, this is just one interpretation.
88Ultimately, because of its vague, surreal, and inexplicable quality,
89Kafka's work lends itself to nearly as many interpretations as readers.
90Perhaps the idea is that we should accept our absurd condition and not take it so seriously.
91Perhaps the idea is that we should and must struggle against it.
92Or perhaps the idea is that we can't know what the idea is.
93In truth, only Kafka will ever have known exactly what his work meant,
94and it's fair to speculate that in some sense, perhaps not even him.
95What is undeniable, though, is that Kafka's work has left a lasting impact on literature, philosophy, and humanity at large.
96It has helped readers around the world feel less alone in their own hunches of truth and moments of Kafkaesque experiences.
97Kafka's own story is not necessarily unusual.
98His father although cruel, his life although sad; neither were nor are all that uncommon.
99To be born into a faulty family, bad place in the world, or a weak body or brain.
100To live and die having never recognized one's full potential.
101To have been stuck in a bureaucratic cog of a business organization or government system.
102To have felt the guilt and anxiety of existence for no clear reason.
103We have all, at least at times, experienced the Kafkaesque.
104Kafka's work is not considered great because it describes something profoundly unique,
105but because it describes something mundanely common in a profound way.
106An encapsulation of an often indescribable experience, a part of life that touches us all.
107When referring to Kafka, writer Anne Rice once said that his work helped her realize the following approach in her own work;
108"Don't bend; don't water it down; don't try to make it logical; don't edit your own soul according to the fashion."
109"Rather, follow your most intense obsessions mercilessly."
110Kafka's work sought not to alleviate the soul through remedies of false hope or delusion,
111but rather, through the direct confrontation with the darker aspects of self.
112By distorting reality to map more accurately onto his own sense of human experience,
113he revealed a certain remedy of unhindered self-examination and carved out a place in the world for others to do the same.
114"I think we ought to read only the kind of books that wound or stab us."
115"If the book we're reading doesn't wake us up with a blow to the head, what are we reading for?"
116"So that it will make us happy?"
117"Good Lord, we would be happy precisely if we had no books..."
118Wrote Kafka in a letter to a friend.
119Although he might not have shared this explicitly,
120Kafka's work embodies and reminds us not that we wish to give up,
121but that despite all the absurdities and problems, we wish to continue.
122We wish to struggle against the universe and forge our own way.
123We wish to find and connect over honesty, however hard it may be.